[HN Gopher] Fire Apparatus - United States vs. Europe (2016)
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Fire Apparatus - United States vs. Europe (2016)
Author : blopeur
Score : 61 points
Date : 2022-08-19 08:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fireapparatusmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fireapparatusmagazine.com)
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I'm not a firefighter (nor do I know much about firefighting),
| but I really enjoy seeing the differences in these sorts of
| specialised equipment across the world. Even the uniforms are
| pretty different (which a layperson would probably notice when
| visiting). The helmets used by North American firefighters are
| very distinctive, whereas European helmets look more like daft
| punk or fighter pilots.
|
| I'd love to see this sort of comparison on other jobs you'd think
| would be the same. I'm also curious what differences there are in
| other parts of the world like Asia or South America.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The helmets used by North American firefighters are very
| distinctive, whereas European helmets look more like daft punk
| or fighter pilots._
|
| See:
|
| * https://www.firehouse.com/safety-
| health/ppe/helmets/article/...
|
| Podcast that discusses things:
|
| > _The battle over the traditional fire helmet and what I'll
| call the "Eurohelmet" is growing, as some U.S. departments are
| making the switch. It's hard to nail down exactly why
| firefighters are unhappy about wearing the new style helmets.
| After all, they're safer, they weigh less, and they offer
| better eye protection._
|
| * https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/personal-
| protectiv...
| leetrout wrote:
| The euro helmets are so much nicer. I think it will eventually
| catch on in more of the US.
|
| But as the sign in the kitchen in Backdraft says about the fire
| service:
|
| 150 years of tradition unimpeded by progress.
| fm2606 wrote:
| I was a firefighter-paramedic for 14 years before I left in
| 2020. You are spot on about the 150 years of tradition. But I
| don't think euro style helmets will ever catch on in the U.S.
|
| The department I worked for did not care what helmet a person
| used as long as it was NFPA approved for firefighting. We had
| one Lieutenant with 20+ years of service who switched to the
| Euro style and he absolutely loved it. Said it was the most
| comfortable helmet he ever wore.
|
| I can tell you a traditional American style helmet is very
| uncomfortable and when I was in full bunker gear with an air
| pack on, the back of my helmet always hit my air tank not
| allowing me to look up very well.
|
| During training when we would have to repel we had a safety
| belay attached to the back of the class 3 harness. As soon as
| you went over the side the belay rope would push the back of
| the helmet up causing the head to push forward (chin to
| chest). Just completely uncomfortable and awkward. You had to
| spend a few seconds to get adjusted so you could focus on the
| actual training and getting yourself unfucked from the belay
| rope that wouldn't be there in an actual situation.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| US firefighter-EMT here. I was under the impression that
| our "duck tail" helmets were designed to shed water. If so,
| that was long before we had modern insulated water-
| resistant bunker gear. And water is not really that big a
| problem anyway so yeah, we should probably switch to the
| European style.
| fm2606 wrote:
| Yeah I was told that in the early days, when the fire was
| out and they were overhauling, they would wear the
| helmets backwards because of the longer brim thus helping
| to keep water and debris out of their face.
| cjg_ wrote:
| Found a quite good article about differences on the helmets
| (and some other firefighting techniques like fognails) in
| https://www.firehouse.com/safety-health/ppe/helmets/article/...
|
| This fognail video was quite interesting also
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe_V7aLyzM8
| nickserv wrote:
| In France, specifically Marseille and Paris, some fire brigades
| are military units, not civilian.
|
| Is this something that's done in the US as well?
| bombcar wrote:
| A friend long ago worked on-base for the Marines in the
| firefighting division, and they had an inter-agency and would
| help respond to issues on the nearby freeway, etc.
|
| But most US brigades are specifically civilian.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| In researching the answer to this, I discovered that the
| majority of fire crews in the US and France are volunteers: 70%
| in US, 80% in France.
|
| (I'm pretty sure the answer to your question is "no", but I
| didn't get a firm source for that).
| maxerickson wrote:
| No, not really.
|
| Cities/counties/local municipalities tend to provide
| firefighting services to residents.
|
| The National Guard will participate in fighting wildfires, but
| there are firefighters employed by the land management agencies
| that take the lead role.
| namdnay wrote:
| They're technically military, but they're under the command of
| the civilian city prefect, and there's no crossover with other
| military units, so I'd say it's more a relic of the past than
| an actual real difference in way of working or organising
| mongol wrote:
| What does that mean? They are technically military but under
| civilian command? What makes them military?
| di4na wrote:
| They are paid by the army budget and are using a different
| command and control tradition. They do not have as many
| volunteers. Etc.
|
| Basically a relic of history, they developed separately
| from the rest of the system.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Military bases in the US will typically have their own fire
| departments. They might respond to civilian fires via mutual
| aid agreements.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| It's not just fire trucks, but also vehicles for garbage
| collection, delivery, ... . I'm from Europe, and American-style
| vehicles feel to me oversized and and too heavy for the purpose,
| while the equivalent vehicles in Asian cities often feel
| undersized.
|
| It's interesting, I think. I think it's a combination of
| different requirements and different cultural outlook on things.
| burlesona wrote:
| This phenomenon is called "spatial discipline." In much of the
| world, things are smaller and more carefully designed to fit in
| smaller spaces, or to do more with less space.
|
| The US is a vast, open country, mostly plains. Even where
| people are concentrated, our cities are mostly post-car
| suburban sprawl. When you have a lot of money, land is
| abundant, and car transportation is assumed, there's basically
| no reason to care about wasting lots of horizontal space with
| careless design.
|
| Thus the US has less spatial discipline than anywhere else in
| the world. Nearly everything here is the architectural
| equivalent of an electron app burning through gigs of ram to
| display text, because no one cares.
|
| This is "normal" and what people here are used to, which means
| a lot of people genuinely like it. I think it has a significant
| influence on culture; among other things, it makes us less
| sensitive to waste in general, and more prone to think of
| things as single-use and disposable.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| The effect is very noticeable in e.g. dashcam videos posted
| on Reddit. Ignoring obvious factors like side of the road
| driving on, videos from the USA are very obvious from the
| scale of the urban/suburban environment with huge roads and
| intersections, huge cars/utes/SUVs and buildings very far
| apart. Videos from Australia show a more scaled down
| environment, with much narrower roads and lanes and smaller
| intersections, buildings closer to the road and not set back
| behind large parking lots. Videos from Britain, further
| still. Videos from Canadian cities eg. Toronto look like a
| weird hybrid with an Australian-city level scale but with
| cars and road signs from the USA.
|
| As an Australian living in USA I am often surprised by how
| long it takes to walk a distance that looks like not very
| much on a map.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > Thus the US has less spatial discipline than anywhere else
| in the world.
|
| Even when compared to places like Canada and Australia?
| Canada's population density is 4 people/km2, Australia is 3
| people/km2 and the USA is 36 people/km2.
|
| That said, as an Australian visiting the Netherlands (508
| people/km2), one of the first things that caught eye was the
| residential garbage disposal. In the Netherlands you don't
| have single house bins that are picked up house by house.
| Instead they cart their kitchen garbage bags out to communal
| bins in the street. Those communal bins look like this:
| https://utrechtselect.nl/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/01/recycleb... They are small on the
| surface because the bin is under ground.
|
| It's more efficient in so many ways. They aren't just saving
| space in the street - the house doesn't need storage space
| for a weeks worth of garbage. And being the Netherlands, the
| weeks worth garbage is separated into 4 recycling types. And
| the garbage truck doesn't have to stop at each house, but
| rather just once per street.
| bitwize wrote:
| The USA is very much like Australia. Major difference is it
| takes about 20 km to go from, say, Brisbane CBD to the
| boonies in Australia -- whereas in the USA, particularly
| the northeast corridor, you have to go a bit farther
| through densely but not _too_ densely populated suburbs.
|
| If you want to see what spatial discipline looks like,
| check out Japan. I've always been impressed by Boston's
| ramification into side streets and back alleys where
| interesting shops, bars, and restaurants can be found. But
| a Japanese city ramifies a couple of iterations deeper: the
| side streets have side streets, the back alleys have back
| alleys. And they are littered with family-owned
| restaurants, tiny bars where you can have a conversation
| (unlike American bars where you have to shout to be heard
| over the sportsball game on every TV and the entire bar
| screaming when a score is made), and specialty shops of
| every sort. The shop you're interested in may be on the
| fourth, fifth, or tenth floor of a building. Any square
| meter that can be converted to retail space, will be. Train
| stations play host to entire subterranean strip malls. It's
| nuts. It's kind of cyberpunk. Or rather, cyberpunk borrowed
| from the aesthetics that blossomed on Asian city design
| constraints, particularly those of Japan, Hong Kong proper,
| and Kowloon Walled City.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I appreciate that your comment doesn't leave it at "Americans
| are stupid and morally deficient" in explaining why American
| cities sprawl.
|
| > among other things, it makes us less sensitive to waste in
| general, and more prone to think of things as single-use and
| disposable.
|
| I think this is mostly down to consumerism. Companies made a
| lot of money off of the wealthy American middle class in the
| late 20th century (and up to now) and convincing them to work
| more to spend more on cheap, disposable things was/is
| immensely lucrative. I'm sure in some indirect way, wasting
| space only helps reinforce the notion that waste in general
| is okay, but I don't see it as a primary driver.
|
| To that end, does anyone know of any organized initiatives to
| get people to move away from disposable plastic junk (often
| imported from China or some other place with abhorrent track
| records for environment, working conditions, political
| repression, etc) and toward a less consumerist culture (fewer
| more expensive possessions that we mend when they break
| rather than throwing them away)?
| silvestrov wrote:
| > basically no reason to care about wasting lots of
| horizontal space
|
| There is, but not obvious: the effect can be seen in Silicon
| Valley where it takes forevery to get anywhere because you
| need to drive a long distance to get to your destination
| _because it is so far away_.
|
| Long distances make for congestion when cars are the main
| method of transportation (also: see LA).
|
| Subways (and cyckling) scale a lot better. See Paris/London
| or Tokyo or Amsterdam/Copenhagen.
| t_mann wrote:
| Less technical, but I love the paint jobs / exterior design on
| many US fire trucks. I guess they're a byproduct of US fire
| departments using more custom-made gear, which I just learnt
| about.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Barwick says that most of the European aerials she has seen
| are smaller than their U.S. counterparts. "Europe keeps its
| aerial units quite small, likely because of the street
| limitations and the building heights and construction,"_
|
| An American-style 100-foot turntable ladder [3] might have a 5.8m
| wheelbase and a 12m overall length, whereas a typical European
| 32-meter ladder is more like a 4.8m wheelbase and 10m overall
| length [4].
|
| Prior to 2017, London's fire brigade only operated 32m ladders -
| which can only reach the 10th floor of a tower block - because at
| the time of purchase, the longer ladders on the market would have
| struggled to navigate London's streets.
|
| LFB recently got some 64m ladders [1] (to reach the 20th floor)
| after an awful fire in a 24-storey tower block which killed a lot
| of people. Surprisingly, the new ladder trucks aren't actually
| that much bigger in terms of wheelbase - but they're twice the
| weight, have four axles instead of 2, and the telescoping ladder
| has 7 sections instead of the usual 4/5.
|
| [1] https://www.london-
| fire.gov.uk/news/2021-news/november/londo... [2]
| https://www.magirusgroup.com/de/en/serving-heroes/deliveries...
| [3] https://1641088.fs1.hubspotusercontent-
| na1.net/hubfs/1641088... [4]
| https://www.magirusgroup.com/de/en/serving-heroes/deliveries...
| tialaramex wrote:
| The Grenfell Tower tragedy is mostly not a story about not
| having big enough ladders, or at least, that's probably not a
| good way to solve the problem.
|
| It's a story about committing to one reasonable strategy
| (remain in place, don't evacuate tall residential buildings but
| instead design and build tall structures so that all plausible
| fires will be contained and can be fought inside) but then
| deciding implementation of that strategy is too expensive so
| you won't bother (these materials are cheaper, and look nicer,
| so too bad that now the building has no fire integrity).
|
| Unfortunately, despite originally announcing it will "implement
| in full" any and all recommendations from the investigation
| into Grenfell, the Tory government decided that actually the
| recommendations made (e.g. "Personal evacuation plans" for the
| disabled - figure out what that nice lady in a wheelchair
| living up on 18 is supposed to do when the elevators are out of
| action during a fire) were expensive so they just won't.
| OJFord wrote:
| Is it a term of art unfamiliar to me as a layman (but I can see
| how it would be to draw a distinction from non-water-pumping
| units), or just generally American to call these (to me: fire
| engines) 'pumpers'?
|
| Interesting (I think) aside: 'fire engines' is a remnant of (and
| now 'fire' is a redundant qualifier) garden watering systems
| being called 'engines', pumping systems (and earlier still all
| sorts of mechanisms) generally.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Not every fire apparatus has a pump. Squad units, rescue units,
| ladder units probably won't.
|
| What we call these things in my (rural California) district:
|
| * Engine - has pump, 500-800 gal tank.
|
| * "Brush" or Wildland unit - 4wd, 300 gals, smaller pump
|
| * Water Tender - ~2000 gals, has a pump but no hoses other than
| a supply hose
|
| * Squad unit - extraction tools (eg "jaws of life"), saws, lift
| bags, etc. Usually no water, though we have one squad with a
| small pump-less tank operated by air pressure.
|
| * Rescue unit - basically a work truck with equipment for water
| rescue and technical rescue (inflatable boat, ropes, harnesses,
| pulleys, etc).
| account-5 wrote:
| I'm sad the Green Goddess's didn't feature as one of the UK
| trucks. They're still in service in the UK for when the fire
| service goes on strike for better pay, despite getting double the
| amount of the armed service personnel covering said strike; about
| which I am definitely not bitter or cynical about in the
| slightest.
| teh_klev wrote:
| For the benefit of anyone treating this comment with any
| seriousness...
|
| The UK Fire Service last took _nationwide_ industrial action in
| 2002 and the strike lasted for two days. In 2004 there were a
| handful of wildcat actions that fell out of the the 2002 /2003
| industrial action, however 999 emergency calls were being
| responded to by staff involved in the "strikes".
|
| The Green Goddess fleet thankfully isn't used now and in their
| place third party operators now operate the same modern fire
| apparatus from the same fire stations in the event of an all
| out strike.
|
| > despite getting double the amount of the armed service
| personnel covering said strike
|
| For the benefit of anyone's doubt about what UK firefighters
| are paid, see this page here:
|
| https://www.fbu.org.uk/pay-rates/pay-settlement-2021
|
| Let's just say it's not a very highly paid job when you
| consider the risks attached to the role.
|
| These are the pay scales offered by the British Army (see the
| section on Soldier Pay and Officer Pay):
|
| https://apply.army.mod.uk/what-we-offer/army-life/benefits
|
| Trying to compare armed forces pay with civil emergency
| services pay is like comparing apples and oranges. If you're in
| the forces your accommodation, food and many other expenses are
| included in your compensation.
|
| I feel this is yet another ill informed divide and conquer
| comment.
| account-5 wrote:
| Yes my comment was mostly tougue in cheek, though I do
| remember responding to an emergency with a Green Goddess with
| no help during that time. But you forget to mention the
| second jobs as a factor which from my understanding,
| considering the time off, is very common in the service.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| So much of North American cities are buried under pavement.
| Neighborhood road widths are designed to accommodate big fire
| engines.
|
| The result is sprawl and unwalkable neighborhoods. Every
| household needs two cars.
|
| The developers and their politician friends talk up high rise,
| but you can get a bunch more density with narrow streets and
| separations and housing that people want to live in
| maxerickson wrote:
| My town was laid out from like 1880 to 1920 and all the streets
| are wide, with large front yards in front of most houses. They
| weren't laid out that way to accommodate large modern fire
| engines.
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